Page 20 of Loverboy

“Not if you want me to stay with you.” Jasper didn’t budge. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get it over with quickly. I have work after we take the mattress back to your place, anyway.”

“Our place,” I corrected quietly, stealing a glance at him before looking at my phone again and pretending to get lost in it.

“Right,” he repeated. “Our place.”

I swore I could see the corners of his lips curl into a smile in my peripheral vision, and my heart soared. It was ours, just like home used to be.

The rest of the drive was quiet for the most part, and as we got closer to our destination, my anxiety spiked. By the time we pulled into the driveway of the corner lot we spent our teenage years in, I was holding my breath.

Jasper turned off the engine and turned toward me, reaching over the center console and gripping my thigh, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The pressure was a small comfort, and I was already becoming dangerously reliant on it to function.

“What if she’s mad at me?” I exhaled shakily.

“What? She’s not mad at you, Milo.” He shook his head. “She wants you to be okay.”

“Are you mad at me?” I tilted my head back slightly, fighting the onslaught of tears that began to blur my vision.

Jasper didn’t answer, his thumb stroking my thigh the same way it had the other night. I didn’t move. The silence pressed in, suffocating, and I wanted to crawl inside his skull just to know what he was thinking.

“Yeah, I’m fucking pissed,” he admitted, taking my hand and tracing the scar on my palm, the one that mirrored his own—a symbol of the promise we made as teens. “You think I bled like this just for you to give up on me like that?”

I shook my head vehemently, air catching in my throat.

Jasper gripped my hand and drew me impossibly close, the heat of his breath ghosting over my face and making me light-headed. “You can’t die until I say you can, especially not over some bitch who never deserved you in the first place.”

Shit.

There was nothing I could do to stop the tears once they started. I broke down completely, chest heaving with every ragged inhale. I must have looked horrible. Ugly. Pathetic.

Jasper unbuckled his seatbelt and reached over, unclipping mine with the haste of someone trying to escape a wreck. He pulled me into his arms and tucked my head under his chin, hands hovering over my back, like he was afraid I might break. But I was already broken.

“What are you crying for now?” He cradled me against his chest, and I couldn’t tell whether he was shaking too, or if it was simply the force of the sobs wracking my body.

“I don’t know,” I lied. It was too hard to tell him how his words twisted me up inside. “I can’t help it.”

“God, you’re such a fucking mess,” he said gruffly, pressing his lips against the top of my head.

He was right; I was a mess. I destroyed everything, every relationship of mine destined for failure. I couldn’t keep anyone around because I didn’t know how to stop myself from hitting the self-destruct button every time the alarm bells went off in my head, signalling something was too good for me to keep.

So why was Jasper so committed to me? Why didn’t he leave me alone and let me die in peace? I wasn’t sure I even cared. If he wouldn’t let me go, then I wouldn’t let him go either, even if it killed us both.

Jasper held me until I finally stilled. When he released me, I wiped at my face furiously with the heels of my hands, trying to pull myself together before we went inside. I yanked open the sun visor and stared into the mirror, the whites of my eyes marred by broken blood vessels. My cheeks were tacky with tears, and rubbing them raw only made things worse.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” Jasper suggested. “You’re probably going to cry like a baby when we get in there anyway.”

“Nope. I’ll be fine. No more tears,” I insisted with a harsh sniffle, forcing my body into motion as I opened the passenger door.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He smirked.

The sound of the car doors closing carried an air of finality, alongside a heavy dose of dread. Jasper reached the front door before me, holding it open and beckoning me inside. It would only be a few minutes. In and out. I could handle that.

Everything was exactly the way I remembered it. Directly ahead were the same old wooden stairs that led up to two bedrooms, an office, and a bathroom. To my immediate right was the living room, but nobody ever did much living in it, so calling it that didn’t feel right. We did all of our living in the basement—my makeshift bedroom. But I was too scared to go down there now. I wouldn’t confront that demon until I moved back home after the apartment’s lease ended.

I didn’t bother to take off my boots, knowing we’d be hauling Jasper’s mattress outside. It was also a small comfort that made me feel like I could run away at any time, if I really needed to. The floorboards creaked beneath my weight as I shuffled further into the house, Mom’s silhouette slowly coming into view from the next room.

“Hey honey,” Mom called softly, emerging from the kitchen. “How you doin’?”

She looked restless, like she didn’t know what to do with her body, as if she were approaching a wounded animal and desperately trying not to scare it away.